Date: Wed 29th September, 2010
Venue: The Lowry, Pier 8, Salford Quays, M50 3AZ
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City leaders and hotel operators are having high level talks about how Manchester’s city centre hotel capacity can grow to support bids to attract bigger international events. A major bid currently at planning stage requires 8,000 available hotel rooms - around 2,500 short of current numbers.
Stephen Miles, the Radisson Edwardian’s general manager and the chairman of the Manchester Hoteliers Association told Insider’s The Future of Hotel Development breakfast event: "There is a piece of business Manchester is working on at the moment for a convention which requires 8,000 bedrooms in central Manchester and we don’t have enough of them at the moment. Does Sir Howard Bernstein put that bid up there? He’s asking me how we can operate at that level."
A board member of Visit Manchester, Miles also said the city has a clear strategy the city wants to attract events that cement Manchester’s position in the world events calendar. "Whether we like it or not, this city is now up there as a major convention city alongside Las Vegas, Birmingham and Vienna. Some of us have to wake up to that fact and realise that if we’re going to take the city forward we need more venues and quality hotels in the city centre."
Nick Smart, vice-president of development for industry giant Hilton said the London market has held up remarkable well, defying gravity, but that in an always-cyclical market some of the best developments have taken place in a recession - he encouraged developers and operators to be bold.
"If it was only ever good, then we’d only ever see offices and residential. But like a forest fire every now and then you need one. It requires courage, there’s little capital around, but in these tough times you won’t get the opportunity again for a long time," he said.
Introducing the event, Hugh Anderson, partner in the hospitality and leisure team at consultancy Edward Symmons said there is a pipeline for additional rooms in Manchester in all segments of the market. He said that newly planned hotel rooms stand at 450 in the five-star market, 300 four-star, 200 three-star and more than 600 newly planned budget rooms - a potential increase of 1500 rooms.
Asked about the role of planners in the process, Dave Roscoe, planning development manager for Manchester City Council, said: "It would nice to pick and choose, but we don’t have that luxury. We’ve tried to use our planning and regeneration powers to deliver outcomes and so we put very stringent tests into the process lead to outcomes and don’t just raise people’s land values. A few years ago everyone with land wanted to build a hotel, it’s different now.
"We’ve granted permission to different budget hotels, but we think there are opportunities in other parts of the city centre. We would still like to see the Old Fire Station developed as a hotel. We’re using two approaches there, a big carrot and a bit stick. We also believe there needs to be realism, if they can’t demonstrate a good business case then those discussions don’t go very far."
Peter de la Perrelle, development director of Peel Leisure, said opportunities have been restricted since the banking crisis, but that some trends were surprising: “Between 1997 and 2007 there was hardly any increase in the total number of hotel room numbers. But the power of the brands and the internet driving top line revenues meant that the independents in places like Blackpool and Bournemouth called it a day because they couldn’t afford to invest in search engine power and in their products. It opened the way for Whitbread and Travelodge to change the market completely.”